


Charm City

by JoanieLSpeak, MELK_Original



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Magical Tattoos, Prison, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-25 23:47:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15651408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoanieLSpeak/pseuds/JoanieLSpeak, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MELK_Original/pseuds/MELK_Original
Summary: Lowbrows walk the land like zombified addicts, endlessly searching for their soulmates to rid them of their painful need to feel complete. Meanwhile, the elite enjoy a carefree life from on high, ruling all and easily finding and binding to each other by their fated markings scrawled somewhere on their bodies. Will Graham (of the infamous Dr. and Mrs. Willaby Graham Grahams), has carried the burden of his embarrassing soulmark for thirty-two long, arduous years. He’d forced himself into seclusion over The Fence to avoid meeting the cretin who should mouth the saying etched into his forearm, but now that he’s about to serve an overwhelmingly long prison sentence for a crime he did not commit, all that is about to change.Even psychopaths are blessed with doting soulmates. Especially Willaby Graham II.





	Charm City

**Author's Note:**

> I jokingly mentioned a soulmate trope + prison AU mash-up on Tumblr, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it.
> 
> [Find WIP updates here.](https://joanielspeak.tumblr.com/post/182916443043/wip-intro-charm-city-genre-fanfiction-sci-fi)

Will clutched his right arm to his bare chest and pointlessly lowered his voice. “I need long sleeves,” he mumbled to the officer doling out shirts. His glasses slid down his nose as he tapped the table. "I wrote ahead. My lawyer said I could have three. Graham. Will Graham. Please check."

The wide-open, recently hosed-down cinderblock room was filled with rows of inmates in varying stages of dress, anger, and denial, and the guard at the center was less than enthusiastic to have Will tapping her table and making demands. “You will get what we give you, and you will smile and thank me, you sick degenerate prick.” A pile of dingy tee-shirts smacked Will’s chest. “Dress and get in line, scum.”

He'd asked for long sleeves, but they were not guaranteed to him. Prisoners asked for a lot of things they were denied, but it wasn't an unreasonable request – inmates were by law allowed to cover their marks if they were still unpaired.

What Will was desperately attempting to avoid was laughingly referred to as larking, but it was not just frivolous fun. It was a cruel faux-bonding trick attempting to fool fate. It was easy to accomplish when the mark was scrawled with a simpler phrase – _hello, right this way, I've heard so much about you, please take your seat._ Larkers orchestrated meetings or phone calls with prerecorded conversations, timing it in a way to soulbond two completely inappropriate individuals as they unknowingly uttered the phrases marked on each other's bodies.

Prisons were rife with this vile behavior. But, being what prisons were, criminals had their rights stripped from them as quickly as they were stripped of their attire, and Will's less than common phrase had apparently been denied special treatment.

Will scrambled to dress himself and hugged the rest of his shirts against his arm as the guard stood and bellowed, “Stand up straight, boys! And shut your cock-gobbling mouths! You will be chained! You will wait like good little degenerates. You will exit the building! You will board the bus in a civil manner. You will comply! Or you will be shot without question and burned in the yard! Do you understand?!”

The room moaned its compliance.

As Will backed up to take his place in the long line of imposing men, his heel rocked across the slippered foot of another inmate. An arm shoved him, and he stumbled forward, turning back to face a tall, glaring man in an orange jumpsuit, the letters R-E-S-P-E-C-T marking the back of his shaved head.

The word _respect_ was now permanently stricken from Will’s vocabulary. With any luck, the cokehead drilling holes into him would also be permanently stricken from his life as well.

“Quit messing around!” yelled the guard. “Back in line!”

Chains rolled out.

_Click!_

_Clink!_

They filed out the door.

_Slam!_

The chain gang lurched forward, stopping, filing, tripping over feet and tugging waists.

The bus was quickly crammed with angry, sour men, all lost or losing their battles with the corrupt parole board. The tension among the mass of criminals was palpable: sweat, piss, meat.

Will wrapped the tee-shirts around his arm, hiding the shameful words scrolled like a finely embellished indignity into his skin.

“Hey, Prince Charming, sit with me!”

Will ignored him.

“I’m keeping the seat warm for you, brown-eyes!”

Animals – all of them.

Will filed to the back of the bus and took his seat next to a sneering man with a scar that pulled his upper lip toward his nose.

“Ever thee a dragon danth?” he lisped.

Will shook his head and tried to avert his eyes.

“Look at me!” snapped the man.

Will complied, and the man rolled up his tee-shirt to show off the mark on his left pectoral muscle. The basic words, written in a very straightforward office typeface read: “Come on in.” Around it, in the shape of a heart, had been inked a large red dragon.

Come on in.

It was so plain, so benign, it was damn near offensive in its simplicity. Will would have given his right testicle to have those words adorn his body instead of what he'd been born with.

The man flexed his chest, and the dragon grew and twitched around the phrase, pride beaming across the man’s face. "I named her Reba, like my onemate."

“Very nice,” uttered Will.

“Aren’t you a slice of pie!” shouted a voice from the front. “I could eat you up!”

Sweat beaded down Will’s temple, and he twisted the shirts tighter. This was a nightmare.

“Good news, you shits!” shouted the fat guard at the front of the bus. “We’re having trouble with the truck, so enjoy the sauna, boys!”

Moans erupted all around him, and the air pulsed with hostility.

Every second they sat on the bus, the air grew thicker with the smell of spit and sweat. The inmates were already cursed with a four-hour drive to another maximum-security pen. Each minute ticking by was begging for the sort of troubling situation Will feared most of all: tedious conversation with these heathens.

Inmates twisted around, grumbling and smacking each other, though their chains kept them glued to their seats.

“My balls are stuck to the goddamn seat, Jesus fucking Christ!”

Will pressed his fist against his mouth. He could plug his ears. He could wrap the shirts around his head to deaden the sound. If he couldn't hear his soulmate speak, he couldn't be bonded. That was a fact.

“And what exactly are you hiding?”

Will’s eyes flicked up to find a man with a goatee peering over the back of the seat in front of him.

“You look nervous.” The man reached behind the seat. “Abel.”

Will wasn’t stupid. He knew this game and shook his head in reply. “I keep my hands to myself, thanks. Graham.”

“Nice to meet you, Graham. Is that your forename? You look like you could be English …”

“Surname.”

Abel grinned. He was clearly intrigued by what was hidden under the tee-shirts, so Will tightened his grip.

“You can’t avoid it," said Abel. "And why would you try? I will never understand this. They’re your soulmate; you’re gonna want to love them in some capacity – no use fighting it.”

“Love has too many definitions.”

“True,” he said, nodding. “I guess you could end up like that loony who married a chicken. Who knew that could happen?!” he laughed. "I was pretty lucky,” he continued, leaning on the seat. “I sort of knew the place, just not the time.” He held up his hand with the words _‘Did you fail the trig exam?’_ faintly scrawled across his palm. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that gem. I tried to trick it, though – took trigonometry in high school. No dice … It knows, Graham. It always knows. So I was forced to wait until college.”

As fascinating as Will found none of this, he was optimistic that the longer he remained engaged with a single person, the less of a ruckus he would find himself in later.

“Did you?” asked Will. “Fail the test?”

Abel snickered. “Big time. She failed too – like it was meant to be.”

“How’s she feel about you being locked up?”

“She’s the reason I’m in here,” he said. “Offed her and her whole family. It was my fault really … but there is no accounting for taste.”

Will’s gaze fell to the sticky floor of the bus. There was an unfair irony in finding your soulmate. You took them – heart and soul – through love and life – ’til death do you part; but your love could be vastly different than theirs. Devotion, obsession, infatuation, it never mattered how you defined it, it was all the same. Your mate could merely love to hurt you, or love the way you make them feel. There were islands of people – some the size of cities – devoted to quarantining those who would remain unpaired and free to love who they choose, but they were dens of debauchery – marshall law ruled those towns, lust and gluttony prevailed, and larking was just as rampant inside their walls as out.

“Fate is cruel,” said Will.

“Fate is indeed a harsh mistress, I will give you that. Lovely girl, though …” Abel trailed off, staring into space, then corrected himself. “I meant Fate. Fate is a lovely girl. But my wife was as well. Stunning. Just ... perfect." He kissed his fingertips. "But apparently _‘Did you fail the trig exam?’_ and _‘Yeah, did you?’_ is a very common exchange. Who knew we were all so terrible at mathematics!” he laughed. “I've heard, and this is all speculation, that she was not my onemate." He rolled his eyes. "But I said, her mark was on her neck for God's sake, and I strangled her! That right there proves she was the one, doesn't it?" He held up his palm again and tapped the fading letters. "I mean, look at it! It's practically gone!" he said. "But maybe they're right. Who knows? Maybe my real mate's still out there. Though if they are, I'm not sure I'm inclined to seek them out at this point. Natural pairing still gives me the willies. I believe I prefer having options, but mum’s the word.”

Will bristled. The heat of the bus was beginning to claw its way up everyone's skin, sticking shirts to backs and filling the air with bile-saturated breaths.

“You’re new,” said Abel, drawing attention to Will’s lack of an orange jumpsuit. “You realize you’re going to have to strip to shower, and then we’re going to see it. You can’t hide.”

“I’m very good at hiding.”

“Listen up!” All eyes turned to the fat guard by the driver’s seat.

“Some of you are getting off! Some of you are staying on! We have a second bus! We are getting you assholes across town come hell or high water! We will chain gang and march you bastards if we have to! But we will get you there on time!” The guard peered down at a clipboard. “We’ll split you – right down the middle. Dolarhyde to Lecter, you’re on. O'Halloran to Verger, you’re off.”

Abel grinned. “Oh boy, musical chairs.”

_Click!_

_Clink!_

Chains were unlocked, dropped, threaded through hoops. Sweaty men stood and shifted seats.

_Click!_

_Clink!_

“What the fuck are you looking at!”

More locks, more chains. Abel was tugged to the front of the bus.

“Feel free to get frisky, Darlin’.”

The dragon man was unhooked from Will, and slid into an adjacent seat.

The new order made no sense. Everyone shuffled around, confused and angered by the heat. Chains snaked across the floor. Feet skidded and soaked bodies pushed Will against the window.

_Click!_

_Clink!_

More tugging, and Will found himself in the aisle, his security blanket still pressed against his heart.

His chain was now connected to nothing, and he was the last man standing. “Where should I sit?”

“Take your seat!” shouted the guard.

“Hey, sweetheart!” A hand grabbed the loop around Will’s waist and yanked. He collapsed onto his back, now wedged between the seats, struggling to right himself like an upturned turtle. There was a clatter and a crunch. His glasses …

He finally rolled to his knees, now at the feet of the fat, and very unimpressed guard. “Get up, sugartits.”

No.

No …

Will unconsciously shook his head.

“You saying no to me, sugartits?”

This wasn’t happening.

From behind him, he heard the men laughing and shifting, chains clanking together.

“There are seats back there, you little shit. Sit down!”

Will scrambled to his feet and turned around. Several seats were open halfway to the back, but each bench was already occupied by some loathsome creature.

Mr. RESPECT sat in one.

"What are you looking at, spaz?"

A smoking man with a dancing woman inked on his neck glared at him from another seat.

"I got a dick for you to suck, gorgeous, if you're into that." He paused and cocked his head. "Hell, even if you aren't into it ..."

In a third seat, a man with messy hair and a disfigured eye clenched his jaw as he stared him down.

Will swallowed back his mouthful of bile and unconsciously covered his groin with his tee-shirt covered arm.

How could he pick a lesser evil? They were all still evil! He was wasting time – it was going to happen regardless of what he did.

The guard shoved him forward, and a grumbling voice in the back of the bus finally piped up: “Your cock’s safe with me, sugartits,” mumbled the voice, “I won’t bite unless you ask me to.”

No.

Will’s knees weakened and his whole body flushed red.

This wasn't happening. This wasn't  …

An older, clean-shaven man with immaculately groomed hair stood and motioned to his seat. “I said I won't bite. Please sit. I’d be honored.” His smirk felt as assaulting to Will's principles as it did to his heart.

Will’s face burned with a red hot rage. There – of all places – that hell hole … He’d spent his life avoiding the dregs of society, and now he’d been dropped right into the fray.

His arm dropped, and the shirts fell to the floor.

The man standing at the back of the bus glanced down at the filigreed lettering on Will’s arm: _Your cock’s safe with me, sugartits, I won’t bite unless you ask me to._

Will expected the man to sneer – scoff – scream about the tragedy of fate and the cruelty of man, as he felt himself urged to do. But he didn’t.

Instead, a smile bloomed on the man’s chiseled face, and he began to laugh – a deep, guttural boom that shook his chest.

Then _bang!_

A sudden backfiring engine drew everyone’s attention outside. The guard rushed off the bus to put out the fire enveloping the hood of the second vehicle.

The man still waiting for Will to speak remained focused on their exchange. “Say it,” he hissed. “Say it to me now, and you better hope the guards don’t know what’s happening here.”

Will’s mind was an empty wasteland. He was in an emotional upheaval. He had nothing to say to that cretin. He’d carried around that man’s foul-mouthed and exceedingly rude _sugary tits_ for thirty-two years.

“Come on back here.” The man motioned to the seat again. "I've been looking forward to meeting you, but this is a tricky situation."

Will didn’t move.

Rats and pigs rushed around the bus with empty extinguishers as the other inmates hooted and hollered obscenities at the scrambling guards.

Will didn’t move.

“You can try to refrain if you want. But you’re going to say it whether you want to or not. And don’t think for a second that I blame you for saying it. I carry your charming little phrase with pride, by the way. It’s typed and all caps, right between my shoulder blades: a headline.”

Will grit his teeth. This was unconscionable. It was unfair. This wasn’t the life he wanted, but he could already feel his pupils dilating as the man spoke.

But this wasn’t the life he deserved. He wasn’t even a criminal. This had all been a catastrophic mistake …

He didn’t know why – or how – or what he meant by it, but he wanted that man at the back to suffer for his own lifetime of indignation, and it would only be a matter of days before he’d begin to feel the warmth of infatuation blooming in his chest.

At that moment, however, he still felt the sting of rage inside him, churning and bubbling in his throat. His teeth ground, sweat dripped, and when the guard hopped back on the bus, shoving him toward his fate at the back, Will shrieked into the abysmal darkness of destiny, _“Eat me, you pigfucking clowncock!”_

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this enough to read more, drop me a comment, and I might just work a couple more chapters out of it.
> 
> Update: I made a lot more of this, damnit.


End file.
